Blog : Design

Trying to find a good work/life balance. That was the ideal for many years but now people are beginning to shift this thinking into work/life integration. For an always-on society in rapid adoption of mobile devices and cloud computing the line between personal and work life has become very blurred.

A designer needs to connect with users differently than when designing for enterprise software that lives inside the corporate network and isn’t used “off-prem.” In a mobile world, users are more than their roles or permission levels; they’re people who are busy trying to do a good job while giving their families and friends the attention they deserve.

Young designers seem to have an intuitive understanding of this. They’re the first generation to grow up with mobile devices and the first to consider their digital lives as meaningful as their physical lives. Now that they’re having kids of their own, some of them are checking to see which URLs are available before they settle on baby names.

However, there is no age limit or expiration date on idealism values or business acumen. Designers from other generations can enhance their own skill sets by adopting some traits of their millennial colleagues.

Embrace Uncertainty – the design process is an exploration, rather than a solution

Netflix’s new series Abstract helps people to not only see the built designed world, but understands how it gets that way. Here at Scratch we’ve been patiently waiting for it’s launch as we can find common ground in the show that design is not perceived as a high-brow quality of objects owned by rich people but a way of thinking.

The series focuses on the lives and ideas of creators trying to tease out the drama of what it takes to bring things to life.

At one point Crawford tries to explain her material choices for Cathay Pacific’s swank airport lounges. The relatively inexpensive limestone of the hallway floors, she says, counterbalances the luxurious jade onyx on the walls. The rough, wooden tables complement the soft, mohair velvet–upholstered chairs. So, sure, expensive people talking rarified aesthetics, right? But Crawford insists it’s about more than superficial beauty. “When people walk in, they don’t know why they feel the way they feel,” she says. “But it’s actually all been orchestrated.” Understanding the intent behind design won’t necessarily change the way you feel about the world around you, but it might change the way you look at it.

MAS approached us to bring to life their annual Graduate campaign; an initiative targeted at 1000 professional graduating students.

MAS wanted to extend their relationship with the students beyond the school gates by encouraging them to sign up for a free personal review with one of MAS’ trusted advisers.

In the past, the campaign was found to be lacking in engagement and consistency. Gifts were handed out to the students that were timely to set-up and hadn’t gone hand-in-hand with booking a personal review. There was also question as to how much the students valued the gifts.

Scratch created a tool that could be distributed and used by the advisers when meeting with the students. We set up an online platform, engaged social media and put in place a prize draw to add extra incentive for the students to join the MAS family.

We designed branded gift boxes, pre packed with key-tags that were handed out to the graduating group. The key tags were good quality, and branded with a ‘class of 2016 lock up’. These became celebratory keepsakes for the students while alluring to the Vespa scooter grand prize giveaway that was to be won upon the campaigns finale.

Students could sign up for their personal review online and choose from a selection of gifts to be received upon following through with their review, creating incentive and also ensuring money was well spent.

Packaging has power – enormous power – over what we buy. The fashions we wear express who we are. Packaging does that for products. We identify with a product because we believe that it does for us what we wish it to do. And as any brand manager will tell you, we buy the ‘brand promise’ and the package carries a lot of that promise.

It’s all about emotions. How does the brand make us feel, is what matters. Our first impressions, whether about products or people, are strong and quick. In many cases, packaging is the main influencer.

We also feel that we must finally start seriously caring about the environmental impact of unnecessary and eco-unfriendly packaging. Designers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers are the ones that can influence what happens in the packaging world.

Packaging manufacturers will follow and start making whatever the market wants to buy. Ideally, of course, manufacturers of packaging should also invest more in developing eco-friendly options, but if unfriendly options keep selling well, why would they change? Our daily behaviour proves that branding and packaging are important. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But there is a bigger picture and it includes the inconvenient truth that much of packaging still ends up in garbage, in landfills or in the oceans.

The challenge is to keep the cool, the impact, the fun and the practical function of packaging, but to do it in a way that doesn’t do any damage.